Advocacy groups vs. Bush's 11th hour

The left isn’t waiting until Jan. 20 to try to undo President Bush’s 11th hour regulations and executive orders.

On Monday night, a broad coalition of more than 40 liberal advocacy groups gathered to organize a coordinated attack against regulations the Bush administration is pushing through in its final days.

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The meeting was put together by OMB Watch, a budget and regulatory watchdog group. Representatives from unions, environmental groups, reproductive freedom organizations and a host of others exchanged strategy ideas in an attempt to roll back the so-called midnight regulations.

Representatives from the United Auto Workers, United Food and Commercial Workers Union, AFL-CIO, American Lung Association, Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Wilderness Society and Sierra Club, among many others, packed the room.

“I was actually asked not to attend because there was just a huge response from outside groups,” said OMB Watch's Adam Hughes, who had earlier offered to attend. The meeting came together quickly, organized early last week.

The groups discussed a number of strategies for overturning Bush regulations, including legal options, executive orders, stand-alone bills and the use of the Congressional Review Act — a fast-track method of overturning midnight regulations.

Organizations that are looking to overturn more obscure regulations expressed hope that these could be bundled with other unpopular rules and overturned all at once after Obama takes office. But it’s unclear at best that such a bundling can be done using the CRA.

Rick Melberth, OMB Watch’s director of regulatory policy, said his group will be looking for guidance from the Congressional Research Service or some other knowledgeable entity as to whether the CRA can be interpreted to allow the bundling of regulations. Otherwise, rules that the liberal groups and Congress both oppose might be left intact for lack of time to deal with each separately.

“The Obama administration isn’t going to want to spend a lot of time undoing these,” said one participant, citing the new president’s more pressing economic and war-related concerns.

“There’s not a one-size-fits-all strategy that lends itself to these regulations,” Melberth said. “It may make sense to use several different strategies. We’re hoping that groups with common interests — say, the environmental community or reproductive rights community — follow up with each other after this meeting. We wanted to bring all these people together and let them know that there are other people working on these issues.”

Among the regulations targeted by the group are a rule that would allow federal agencies to determine on their own whether their policies will threaten endangered species, rather than requiring them to go through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for approval. Regulations opening land in the West to oil shale development, mountaintop removal and new abortion restrictions are among other regulations and rules under scrutiny.

The liberal coalition has had a good amount of lead time to prepare for the onslaught of new Bush regulations. Last May, White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten wrote a memo instructing federal agency heads to make sure any new regulations were finalized by Nov. 1. The memo didn’t spell it out, but the thinking behind the directive was obvious. As Myron Ebell of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute put it: “We’re not going to make the same mistakes the Clinton administration did.”

President Bill Clinton finalized regulations within 60 days of the 2001 inauguration, meaning Bush could come in and easily reverse them. Regulations that have been final for more than 60 days are much more difficult to overturn.

Clinton managed to repeal 9 percent of President George H.W. Bush’s regulations and amend 48 percent of them. The rest remained in place.

President Bush managed to repeal only 3 percent of Clinton’s regulations and amend 15 percent.